Probation and sheriff team up in "Watchful Eye"

County Probation Officer Joel Rasing (center) briefs the combined team of Sheriff’s Deputies and Probation Officers for their check on a probationer Wednesday night.

County Probation Officer Joel Rasing (center) briefs the combined team of Sheriff’s Deputies and Probation Officers for their check on a probationer Wednesday night.

County Probation Officer Joel Rasing (center) briefs the combined team of Sheriff’s Deputies and Probation Officers for their check on a probationer Wednesday night.

People on probation

BY THE NUMBERS

Of the roughly 14,500 people on probation in San Diego County:

2,400 are considered high risk and receive regular supervision.

2,600 are medium risk and receive minimal, if any, supervision.

9,500 are low risk and receive no supervision.

Source: San Diego County Probation Department

The 30-year-old drug-addled probationer was going to jail one way or another.

It had been six months since he last checked in with his probation officer, a violation that prompted a team of two probation officers and three sheriff’s deputies to knock on the door of his mother’s Encinitas home Wednesday night. But when the officers found four 4-foot tall marijuana plants growing on his back porch and a narcotic-loaded hypodermic needle in his bedroom, it was enough to book him into jail on new charges.

The arrest is a prime example of how a new partnership between the Sheriff’s Department and county Probation Department is taking shape under a six-month pilot program dubbed “Operation Watchful Eye.”

Its goal is to make neighborhoods safer by increasing the supervision of medium-risk probationers. That happens by having deputies back up probation officers and by improving the flow of information between the two law enforcement groups. The deputies also get to know the people on probation in the areas they patrol.

The deputies at the sheriff’s Encinitas station, which also serves Solana Beach, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe, volunteered to be the first to test the program. The agencies are using existing resources to fund the partnership for now.

The success will be measured after December in hopes of expanding the program to other cities. Police in San Diego and Carlsbad have already expressed interest.

“This allows us to work together as a force multiplier to enhance community safety,” said Mack Jenkins, the county’s chief probation officer. “We don’t have enough probation officers to supervise everyone.”

San Diego County has 80 probation officers and about 14,500 people on probation, Jenkins said.

About 2,400 of those offenders are high risk, meaning they are more likely to re-offend and require the most supervision. The officers focus on managing their high-risk cases, which means the region’s 2,600 medium-risk offenders — ones like the man in Encinitas — don’t get much supervision.

Since the pilot program launched in June, the 40 or so people whose cases are managed by Senior Probation Officer Joel Rasing have been on higher alert.

The program allows Rasing to request the help of any of the 90 deputies at the Encinitas sheriff’s station to do random compliance checks in the area on any given day, increasing accountability in hopes that probationers will stay out of trouble.

“We don’t want them to commit another crime, create another victim or do the things they’re not supposed to do,” Jenkins said.

In fiscal 2009, more than one-third of offenders in the county were arrested for a new crime while on probation, county officials said.

Giving deputies an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the probationers in their neighborhoods is a bonus.

During Wednesday’s compliance sweep, the three deputies met a handful of people on probation for crimes such as assault, drug possession and DUI — information that could be helpful should they cross paths again.

“It gives us a little more access,” Deputy Brent Longfellow said.

One part of the program that is still under development is a way to share probation records with deputies.

Currently, a deputy can learn if someone is on probation by a quick check on the computers in their patrol vehicles. But further information, such as the terms of probation, are not available. It is up to the deputies to call the probation officer and ask, which is sometimes not possible after hours.

Longfellow said the pilot program is already paying off. He now calls Rasing any time of the day to ask about a probationer. The Probation Department has also begun staffing a phone line 24 hours a day to answer similar inquiries from police in the region.

Deputies say they hope one day that the full background report on probationers will be available with a few strokes on a keyboard.

Such a program might take on more urgency if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut state prison spending by sending nonviolent prisoners to county jails becomes a reality. Once those inmates are released, they would become the responsibility of county probation departments rather than the state parole system.

Sheriff Bill Gore said the possible added burden on probation heightens the need for the deputies to help keep track of people on probation.

“It makes sense to have law enforcement be part of the solution,” Gore said. “The more we know, the more we can prevent crime from happening.”